Symposium on Social Good includes Kilgour Lecture by Meredith Clark

“Black Twitter is one space in which historically disenfranchised people are developing our own set of cultural values and filters for culturally competent reporting, information gathering and dissemination.”

Dr. Meredith D. Clark, PhD 2019 Kilgour Lecture

Symposium on Social Good includes Kilgour Lecture by Meredith Clark Reflect Reimagine Rebuild Reflect magine Reimagine Rebuild

SILS hosted its third annual Symposium on Information for Social Good on April 26. Several panel sessions were standing-room only and the 2019 Kilgour Lecture and keynote address by Meredith D. Clark, PhD, filled the Hitchcock Multipurpose Room at the Sonya Hayes Stone Center to near capacity.

Organized around the theme “Reflect. Reimagine. Rebuild,” the 2019 symposium addressed topics including accessibility in physical and digital library spaces, ethics in the e-sports industry, representation of people of color and LGBTQ+ populations in adult romance sections of public libraries, and the datafication of childhood. Student presenters came from four courses: • Disability Informatics & Information, taught by SILS Assistant Professor Amelia Gibson with support from SILS PhD student Laura March. • Information Services in a Diverse Society, taught by SILS Professor Sandra Hughes-Hassell. • Information Ethics (graduate level), taught by

SILS Assistant Professor Maggie Melo. • Information and Computer Ethics (undergraduate level), taught by Dianne Martin, Senior

Faculty Fellow of the NC Study Center.

Meredith Clark is an assistant professor in the University of Virginia Department of Media Studies whose research focuses on the intersections of race, media, and power. Her award-winning dissertation on Black Twitter landed her on The Root 100, the website’s list of the most influential African Americans in the country in 2015. She earned her PhD from the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media.

For the Kilgour Lecture, Clark delivered a talk titled “Black Women Tried to Tell Y’all: Race, Representation, and Self-Preservation through Digital Counternarratives.” Citing historical precedents and recent examples, she explained how people are using new forms of digital communication to challenge mainstream depictions of Black life and culture.

“Black Twitter is one space in which historically disenfranchised people are developing our own set of cultural values and filters for culturally competent reporting, information gathering and dissemination,” Clark said. “I would go so far as to say that centering these emergent values would help any creator of information systems contend with the perennial issues of dominance and subjugation by centering the perspectives of the vulnerable in their designs.” Watch the Kilgour Lecture by Meredith D. Clark on the SILS YouTube channel, youtube.com/uncsils. For presentation slides and more details about the the Symposium on Information for Social Good, visit

info4socialgood2019.web.unc.edu.